New Hope Shares Details on Masking, Sampling Protocols For Expo West
Last Friday, industry event marketer New Hope held a virtual town hall meeting to discuss its plans for this year’s Natural Products Expo West trade show scheduled to be held March 8-12 in Anaheim, California, the first in-person version of the event since 2019.
On the webinar, New Hope, a division of Informa, said it will comply with all local and state regulations for indoor events with 500 or more people, meaning attendees will be required to wear masks indoors (in the convention center as well as Marriott, and Hilton on-site hotels) and show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. Attendees who opt to show proof of a negative test must have rapid antigen test results within the last 24 hours or a PCR test within the last 48 hours.
Sampling will be permitted, though attendees are required to “stop and sample” at booths. Brands exhibiting can offer sealed samples, which require no additional safety provisions, or “prepared” samples in single-serve portions. For the latter, servers must have gloves, a face mask, and a hairnet; with booths required to have a sneeze guard or food cover, along with a handwashing station and sanitization kits.
In addition to the in-person event, which normally sees roughly 90,000 attendees, New Hope will run a simultaneous virtual event for brands. There will be no limitations on the number of attendees in California “given the projected attendance and size of the Anaheim Convention Center.”
Michelle Garseke, Sr Director of Strategic & International Business for New Hope, noted that the event currently has 2,600 exhibiting companies, which include brands, suppliers and ingredient providers. According to a press release, the 2019 event had 3,600 exhibitors. She added that many brands are taking extra precautions in order to keep their employees safe while some larger companies that are attending are cutting back on staff numbers.
“We’ve heard from several exhibitors that are purchasing tests in bulk,” she said. “Some are ordering even custom masks to help keep their staff safe. So they’re really taking [these] precautions to a fun level of really making it a great branding experience and keeping their staff safe at the same time.”
Though the online event was billed as a town hall and Q&A, New Hope did not take questions but rather recommended that brands reach out to the team directly.
Meanwhile, distributor KeHE announced today that its 2022 Summer Show, which was scheduled to be held in New Orleans from Feb 2 and 3, will move to a virtual format that will run Jan 26 through Feb 11.
“With the current surge of COVID-19 cases, and reports of increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant, the current state of COVID-19 has made it exceptionally challenging to host our in-person food sampling show without risking the safety of our attendees,” said Ari Goldsmith, VP of Marketing and Digital Media at KeHE in a release.
